The Clinton administration is studying the possibility of seeking
an agreement with Russia on the outlines of a treaty requiring
new cuts in strategic nuclear arms, going well beyond the
roughly 50 percent reduction in such weapons set as a 10-year
goal by U.S. and Russian leaders in 1993, according to senior
U.S. officials.

The newfound U.S. interest in such cuts is exemplified by a
secret Defense Department study that is now examining the
military consequences of ordering as many as 1,000 to 1,500
additional nuclear warheads to be scrapped on both sides.
That could leave residual forces of as few as 2,000 weapons,
or roughly the level of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal in
1956.

The Pentagon's study represents its first detailed examination
since 1994 of the merits of seeking new constraints on
weapons that defined the status of the two nations during the
Cold War but are now seen by many current and former
military officials as having greatly diminished importance.

Proposing new cuts also is seen by some U.S. officials as a
way to persuade Russian legislators to ratify the so-called
START II treaty, which calls for the 50 percent reduction.
Moscow has been balking at the accord on grounds that it will
cost too much to implement and -- in a provision that seemed
less absurd in 1993 than it does today -- will impel the Russian
government to build additional strategic weapons to maintain
rough parity with the United States at the ceiling the treaty sets.

The Defense Department study is being conducted by the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and by civilian experts at the Pentagon as a part
of a broader review of military strategy and budgets. It is
expected to be finished before a scheduled March summit
meeting here between President Clinton and Russian President
Boris Yeltsin, the officials said.

Yeltsin has already said he supports setting a lower ceiling for
U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arms than the one set by
START II, and some U.S. officials are pressing for Clinton to
reach a tentative accord on the framework of a new treaty
during the summit. Details of the accord then could be
negotiated once the Russian parliament ratifies START II,
according to this proposal.

Former senator William S. Cohen (R-Maine), who was
unanimously approved by the Senate yesterday as secretary of
defense, told the Senate Armed Services Committee several
hours before the vote that "developing with Russia a statement
of principles [on a new nuclear treaty] . . . is one measure
under consideration" within the administration. But Cohen
added that Clinton has not yet approved going ahead with the
idea.

The Pentagon's deliberations are described by some officials as
highly significant in political terms. Clinton historically has been
reluctant to overrule the military on such sensitive issues, and
U.S.-Russian discussions on nuclear arms cuts essentially
ended in 1994 when Defense Department officials decided that
no more reductions were warranted at that time.

Several officials said the Pentagon's new review of U.S.
nuclear force levels grew out of a request by then-Secretary of
Defense William J. Perry to Gen. John Shalikashvili, the Joint
Chiefs chairman, shortly after Perry returned from what aides
described as a disappointing trip to Moscow in October.

Perry had sought in Moscow to convince Russian legislators
that they should move toward ratification of the START II
treaty, which was signed in January 1993 by Yeltsin and
President George Bush. Congress approved the accord in
January 1996, but Yeltsin has not put his political weight
behind it, and the Russian parliament so far has refused to
schedule a vote on it.

After hearing a host of complaints about the accord from
Russian lawmakers and senior Yeltsin aides, Perry became
highly pessimistic about its ratification prospects and convinced
that Washington should take new action to shore it up,
including an accelerated review of seeking much lower nuclear
arms levels, several officials said. One reason for his interest
was that if START II is not ratified, the Pentagon will be
forced to spend an estimated $5 billion over the next seven
years on nuclear weapons that otherwise would be eliminated.

Among the Russian complaints was the fact that in order to
maintain rough nuclear parity with the United States at or near
the ceiling of 3,500 deployed warheads, Moscow would have
to spend billions to deploy more than 500 new intercontinental
ballistic missiles -- of a type known as the SS-27 -- to replace
some of the older missiles that START II orders eliminated.

Noting this factor and other problems, Russian Defense
Minister Igor Rodionov minced no words during Perry's visit
when was asked whether he supported the accord. "I favor the
next treaty, the START III treaty that would continue the
reduction of nuclear weapons," he said.

By interagency agreement, Perry was then authorized to tell
Russian officials and lawmakers only that the Clinton
administration is convinced that the nuclear arsenals remaining
after implementation of the START II accord are "more than
needed to destroy any plausible target set" and "more than
enough for deterrence." He promised that once START II is
ratified by the Russian legislature, Washington would negotiate
a new treaty calling for additional reductions, but did not
specify a ceiling that Washington would support or any other
provisions.

The formulation Perry used has since been criticized by other
officials at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the
State Department and the National Security Council staff as
too mild to overcome Moscow's reservations about START
II. A number of lawmakers, independent experts and former
military officials also have expressed this view, including Sen.
Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the second ranking Republican on the
Foreign Relations Committee.

"This is an urgent matter" for the forthcoming summit, Lugar
said in an interview. "We have to keep saying in a concerted
way that we are interested in moving downward in numbers."
Another supporter of the idea is retired Gen. Edward Rowny,
a longtime arms control skeptic who now says that with "the
Cold War being over" the United States needs fewer warheads
than the START II accord allows.

Retired Air Force Gen. Lee Butler, a former head of the
Strategic Air Command and director of the U.S. nuclear
targeting plan, recently told the Stimson Center, a private arms
control group, that Washington should have embraced a ceiling
of 2,000 warheads in the early 1990s, and that it should
undertake even larger reductions now. "If there's anything that I
regret, any argument that I regret having lost before I retired, it
was my effort to get that [2,000] number," he said.

On the other hand, retired Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the
national security adviser to Bush, expressed skepticism that the
Russians "need to be bribed into signing START II. . . . It
seems to me that we are frantic about it, and I don't know that
we [need to be in] . . . that much hurry."

One administration official, who asked not to be named,
similarly expressed some skepticism that reaching an
agreement on the framework of START III will prompt the
Russian parliament to approve START II while many officials
in Moscow remain upset over another U.S.-Russian security
matter: the move to expand NATO by including several former
Russian allies in Eastern Europe.

"It's not clear to me that the Russians are begging for this
[framework agreement]," instead of merely seeking to use
START II ratification as a point of leverage in the debate over
NATO, the official said. He added, however, that if Moscow
promised that the treaty would indeed be ratified, without
regard to NATO's expansion, "I'm sure you could get
agreement within the administration" to accept a further
one-third cut in residual U.S. nuclear forces, to a ceiling of
roughly 2,000 warheads.

In deciding how such a deal might work, officials said, a major
question is whether the ceiling in any new treaty should apply
to stored nuclear warheads as well as those deployed on
strategic weapons. Weapons that are stored were exempted
from the START II limits, allowing both nations to retain
"reserve stockpiles" of thousands of weapons not subject to
any joint monitoring or limitation. But many U.S. officials want
to include them in START III limits, and they are uncertain if
Moscow will agree.